by Renee leNobel | Apr 11, 2017 | Divorce
It has been four years since I separated from my husband.
My kids have gone from 4 and 7 to 8 and 11.
I have a pretty fantastic life right now. While it has its struggles, I am in a new career that still excites me, and I get up every day looking forward to work. I have a parenting relationship with my co-parent that allows us to share the burdens and joys of parenting far better than we did when we were together.
I spend most of my day feeling content, and some of my days are truly amazing and awesome. The days that are not great last a day (sometimes two), and then I return to being content.
If anyone had told me how long it would take to get to the place four years ago, it would have depressed me further than I already was. But I would be surprised if they had told me how happy I would be. When I was in the hell of separation, I was living out my life as a mom – when that job was done, I was going to be done. Moms are never done being moms, so I would never have been done. Instead, I would have lived out my life as a mom in a sad and depressed state.
I was reminded of this recently.
I met someone who is in an unhappy marriage. She wants out. Her husband does not.
They each have their reasons for their choice. My ex was the one who wanted out, and I did not. I wasn’t happy in my marriage, but fear kept me there. My ex was likely fearful, too, but his unhappiness must have been bigger than his fear, and he stepped out of our marriage. I am grateful for the end of my marriage and the path it set me on.
Divorce opened up a new path for me.
Before, I lived in fear; I did everything out of fear. I took jobs I didn’t like that paid well because what would happen if I couldn’t find work?
I stayed in a marriage that I was unhappy in because what would happen to my kids if I got divorced?
I stayed small and contained, fearing what opening myself up to change would do. I assumed it would be bad.
Change was hard and not easy. I had to change a lot of things.
The hardest part of all was that I had to change my mind about almost everything that I thought I knew about being a woman, a mom, an accountant, and single with children.
Everything. And to do that, I needed help. None of it was easier than staying in a marriage that didn’t work. Yet every step that I took on the new path has opened up a world I thought I would never live in.
So, if you’re hesitating, know that when you reach out for help, you are putting your feet onto your own path forward.
by Renee leNobel | Dec 14, 2016 | Divorce
It is pretty darn easy to get married. All you need is a license; it only costs $100! Of course, some people have fancy weddings, and yes, they take a lot to organize and can be costly. But you get a choice in doing that.
You don’t get the same choice when you are getting a divorce. It only takes one person to decide that they want out of a marriage. Not so with marriage – you both have to say, “I do.” In divorce, one person can file a claim for a divorce. If the other spouse does not deal with it, it goes to the court, and the judge decides. The court does not always make the best decisions regarding families, so I highly recommend that you try to work it out with your soon-to-be ex-spouse before it gets to the courts. Court is darn expensive, too – about $ 5,000 a day. That doesn’t include the cost of preparing to get to court.
I looked up how much it costs to get a divorce, too, and it is cheaper at $80 for a desk-order divorce (if you do all the paperwork yourself). That said, it is pretty impossible to do all the paperwork yourself. Here is a list of steps to getting a divorce in BC. The main sticking point is the Separation Agreement. Yes – that Separation Agreement. Mine was 149 pages long, and each and every one of those pages described something contentious. Oh, except for the signature page, and there were two pages for signatures. So, 147 pages. It’s no wonder it took us a year to get an agreement and felt like a full-time job (and why I refer to our agreement as the “BEAST).”
This is just a start to what you have to have in your agreement in British Columbia:
You have to agree on the date your relationship started. You’d think this would be easy! But I have had clients arguing about this. In one instance, the woman travelled a lot and had a post office box as her address when she first started dating her spouse. She would stay with her boyfriend when she was in town, but she argued that they weren’t living together yet. In other instances, people forget when they moved in together. Depending on the date the relationship started, there can be financial advantages/disadvantages to each person, so this is why it can lead to arguments.
Conversely, you have to agree when the relationship ends (this is usually more tricky). Some people feel the marriage ended years ago, and some still can’t believe it’s over. Again, there can be significant financial consequences depending on what date is decided upon.
You must figure out how to support your children regarding parenting time and money. This took a big chunk of time. A big chunk. Especially if one of the parties is the primary caregiver pre-separation, there is a lot of work to be done to build the trust necessary to start parenting the kids on an equal basis. There is also a lot of learning to be done. For example, did you know that if you have a fifty-fifty parenting arrangement, one parent may still have to pay child support to the other? I’ve explained that in another blog post.
Then, you have to start separating financial assets and debts. You may discover you have assets you didn’t even know about or debt (which is more often the case). In almost every file I’ve worked on, one person had racked up some debt and hadn’t told their spouse. That usually takes some time to sort out. I just worked on one file where an asset turned up at the last minute. How does that happen? You’d be surprised. Of course – both parties had different ideas about how to treat that asset.
Essentially, a Separation Agreement is an agreement that details every piece of how your life will be going forward. And you have to make this agreement with someone you probably don’t like. It takes time and a lot of emotional energy because you are usually in a pretty dark place when building it.
So
Wouldn’t it be great if you had to have a marriage agreement before you got married? How dumb is our society that allows people to go off and get married with a $100 license (that you can order online) when they are in the happy, blissful state called love? It’s super dumb. I can’t think of a fancier word to call it right now because my brain is fried trying to help clients figure out the numbers to put in their Separation Agreement. And I get to forget about it every day and go to sleep. They don’t.
Our current system allows anyone to get married, but there are so many rules before you can get divorced, and you have to follow them. If you disagree with them, the courts will make you agree.
What if you made your marriage agreement in that happy, blissful state of being soon-to-be married?
Well, it might save your marriage or you from marrying the wrong person.
It would certainly make your divorce a lot easier. Ask anyone who has gotten a divorce. I’m sure all divorced people wish they had made a Marriage Agreement. They are convinced, but what is that called? “Preaching to the converted.”
How do we get the word out to those uninitiated to the Divorce Club? Those happy, blissful people who want to get married?
I don’t know. I only ever see the aftermath of those without a marriage agreement. How about you? Can you help spread the word?
by Renee leNobel | Dec 3, 2016 | Divorce
What if.
What do you normally think right after those two words?
I tend to think what if…CATASTROPHE!
My preponderance to imagine the worst case scenario is so ingrained in me that even though I have proven to myself that the worst case scenario NEVER happens, I still always go to what if..CATASTROPHE as my first thought when something seemingly out the ordinary happens in my life.
I get a letter in the mail from the Canada Revenue Agency? Oh no! I’m being audited! I’m going to owe thousands of dollars! (It was actually a certificate thanking me for my volunteer work helping low income seniors do their taxes).
My co-parent asks to talk to me about our parenting schedule? Oh no! He wants to change everything we’ve worked hard to achieve and my life is going to be a disaster as I try to get used to the new schedule. (He wanted to switch Sundays because he had an event to go to).
My kids teacher wants to schedule a talk? “Oh no! My child is a bully!” (She wanted to talk to me about something completely unrelated to my child – would I talk about financial literacy to her class).
The first time I started to notice that my what ifs were always disastrous was when I was in the midst of my divorce and I was imaging the horror that my life would be post divorce and my friend pointed out: “Renee, things never turn out the way you imagine – have you ever been able to predict the future?”
At the time, I scoffed at her – what did she know – she was not in the midst of a horror show like I was. But her words somehow lodged themselves in my brain – I’m not sure if it was because I was out to prove her wrong (hey – maybe I could predict the future) or if I wanted to test her theory with my analytical brain.
I did decide to start testing her theory and surprisingly, I started to notice that things did not turn out in any way shape or form as I imagined them. What was even more surprising was that they never turned out nearly as bad as I had imagined they would turn out.
I started paying attention to the thoughts I had after I said to myself “what if” and I noticed my thoughts were always dire. Then I paid attention to what actually happened and I started to realize that I really could not predict the future (darn it).
I also noticed how my dire thoughts really dragged me down. I spent hours worrying about this future outcome that was never to be. When I realized this I was pretty annoyed with myself – what a gigantic waste of time!
Then I noticed something else. I noticed that I’m not the only that does it. I noticed that pretty much everyone I know does this. Everyone.
I also noticed that if you are in a stressful situation (like being currently separated from your spouse and trying to work towards a separation agreement) that your worst case scenario thinking is working overtime.
I get it. I did it too.
So take it from me and from my good friend who first pointed this out to me .
It will never be what you imagine and it will probably be considerably better.
And the last piece of insight? You will be able to handle it, whatever the future happens to be.
by Renee leNobel | Nov 24, 2016 | Divorce, Finances
What is your relationship with money? I thought I’d better ask you again because I have been assuming you have a similar relationship to money that I have.
Lately I’ve been realizing that my assumptions often get me into hot water.
So to figure out if you have similar money issues to me, I’d better tell you my money history (yes again).
I have always had the fear and thought that there is not enough money. I’m afraid it will run out or that something will happen to stop the flow of money into my life.
This is the thought I operate from: not enough money.
How does this thought manifest in my life?
Well, I am a bit obsessive about checking my current financial situation. Just checking, I think to myself. Just confirming that there is still enough today.
I’m also a bit obsessive about my frugality. I’m not known as the hand-me-down queen for no reason after all.
I also experience a tad (OK a lot) of pain when I spend money. It doesn’t matter if I’m spending it on something fun or on plumbing. It’s all painful.
Now this is kind of a funny aside – because I know people with the exact same fear: not enough money… that leads them to spend it as fast as they can before it does indeed run out. Same fear. Very different manifestation.
OK – back to me.
Imagine my horror when my fears around money came true! They came true to me when I separated from my husband. Suddenly it seemed like the day had come where money did indeed stop flowing into my life (after all, he was the one with the paycheque – not me). I also believed I no longer had any savings as they all went to the lawyer and him.
There is nothing like having your fears realized to make you really fearful.
My fear got so big it took over my life for a while.
Then I developed a new thought around money. That thought was that I needed to somehow figure out a way to jettison my thought of: “there is not enough” as that thought was causing me a lot of pain.
So I developed some strategies and I have been sharing those strategies with you.
One of those strategies is “stop obsessively checking your financial status – you’ll be OK.”
But what if you are that person that avoids checking your financial status…ever?
I also started spending money and finding ways to do so without pain. Maybe you’ve seen me spending that money. I’ve given myself permission to spend money on things like new clothes and going out to eat.
What if you are watching me and thinking: “well, if Renee is spending money, then it must be go time on spending?”
But I’m still not spending more than what I’m bringing in. I increased my money inflows and still make sure I’m not outspending those inflows.
But what if you never do that?
I’ve been assuming that you are like me.
But like I said earlier – sometimes my assumptions are wrong.
I will tell you something else I have come to realize about my history with money.
It was not all bad. In fact some of it was awesome.
My obsessiveness around checking my finances and cash flows have turned me into a person that has a very good understanding of how much money I need to live on.
My obsessiveness with building an emergency cushion meant I had options when my divorce did become a reality.
So now I have a different relationship with money. I think “there is enough.”
But I still keep track and I still pay attention to confirm that there is indeed enough. Sometimes I have to adjust things in my life to make sure there is enough.
Some months I have to cut back on my spending or look at new ways to bring in money.
But I need to keep paying attention to know this.
And I also have my emergency money cushion, because you know, the unexpected does happen (like plumbing emergencies – darn it – two this week – but hey I’m not even bummed because I had my emergency cushion).
I also know that my relationship with money is no longer a painful one.
So what are you thoughts around money and what kind of relationship do you have?
by Renee leNobel | Nov 16, 2016 | Divorce, Finances
Let’s face it. Life can be a struggle. As one friend recently posted on Facebook “life is like a roller coaster! I HATE ROLLER COASTERS!” That post got me thinking. I too hate roller coasters, so much so, that I avoid places that have them just so I won’t even have to think about going on one.
But I can’t avoid the roller coaster called life. Sometimes I feel like I’m approaching the top…just cresting the hill to see that giant cliff staring me in the face. For me, that is the worst part of a roller coaster – that feeling of dread knowing that cliff is coming. I am learning to combat that dread though. Because the other knowledge I have come to understand about roller coasters is that there is always an uphill that comes after the drop.
There was a time in my life when I did not have this understanding, a time when I felt like I was staring down that cliff every day – I could not see the uphill that came after it.
I clearly remember that point in my life and always will. Waking up everyday and wondering what the point of anything was. Everything seemed hopeless and nothing in my life seemed to be working. Everything in my life seemed broken, including my financial situation.
I have since noticed this common theme with many other people. There is a strong correlation between emotional pain and financial woes. If your life is not going according to plan, it is likely going to show up somewhere in your finances.
When I was going through my divorce, I was depressed. I had no self-esteem left. I felt like a failure and this translated to the image I projected to the world. I also was not earning any money and had a belief that I would be poor for the remainder of my life. I used to look at my finances on an almost daily basis simply to confirm that yes, I was poor and then I extrapolated my poor financial situation to be a reflection of myself. I considered myself to be worthless, much like my bank account.
During this period, I was applying for jobs and seeing recruiters. I certainly had the qualifications to get many of these jobs but I did not hear back from a single employer.
While this was going on, I thought the problem was my lack of money. That was the cause of all my woes. If only I could have solved my cash inflow problem, I would have been fine.
That was my thinking.
My lack of money certainly was a problem.
But my lack of money was a symptom and not the root cause of what was going on with me. My emotional state was the cause of all my difficulties including my financial ones.
How do I know that it was my emotional state that was causing all my problems? Well, it has become obvious to me over time. As my emotional well-being has improved so has everything else in my life, including my finances.
When I think back to that time, I am grateful that I got on a path to fix my emotional well-being and did not fall into a trap to simply fix the symptoms. It was touch and go for a while which way my life would go and I credit good luck and the good advice of friends who got me onto a path that ended up truly helping me.
I had met a life coach – this was through the Minerva Foundation (an amazing organization). I was lucky enough to participate in their Career Kick Start program. The coach that was helping me recognized I was not in a good emotional state. She did not tell me this, but she listened to me and had the insight to give me the tools I needed to start to recognize it myself. This is another topic for a post, but when you are in a depression, you often don’t even realize it. Friends and family often don’t realize it. I can say, that no one knew how depressed I was. I can put on a brave face and many people can. Sometimes the only way to tell if someone is depressed is to look at the symptoms – one of which is a person’s finances.
One of the things this coach gave me was respite from feeling terrible about myself. The coaching sessions were the only times I had anything resembling hope in my life.
Then the course ended and I no longer got that respite. I sunk deeper and deeper until one day I did not want to go on.
It was at this point that I reached out to my coach in an email and she called me back right away. This was on a Friday. She gave me some emergency therapy and told me to go see my doctor I did a couple of the things she suggested that I do to get me out of my crisis and surprisingly they worked. I spent the weekend doing what she told me to do and by Sunday I had a moment where I felt hope. It was such and incredible feeling that it made me realize that there were things I could do to feel better.
I realized at this point that I could feel good even though my situation was exactly the same as it had been on Friday. I was still poor (in my mind), I was still worthless and un-employable. My family was still broken. Yet for some reason it didn’t seem to matter as much anymore.
I decided I wanted to feel better like this more often.
So I called my coach back and asked her if I could hire her. She told me how much it would cost (she gave me her deal rate). Her rates were pricey (she’s a good coach) and so it caused me a little bit of angst. Ok, it caused me a lot of angst. I mean MY LACK OF MONEY seemed to be the cause of my problems. Now I needed to find more. I started to loop again. I’m poor, I’m worthless, I need money, I don’t have money. I can’t hire my coach. This soundtrack started to play in my brain and again it seemed like money was the problem.
So I went to talk to my good friend who I relied on heavily to give me advice as I could not make my own decisions at this point of my life.
So I asked her advice. “Renée, you need the help now when you don’t have money. If you didn’t have money problems, you would not need the help.”
Wow – now that I read that, I realize how she knew money was a symptom and not the problem.
I hired my coach and she worked with me for six months.
Now this is the interesting part. During the six months I worked with my coach, my life situation did not change. All the circumstances in my life remained exactly the same and I still had no money coming in. The only thing that changed was the way I started to perceive things. My mental state was the only thing that changed. She helped me realize that I had worth despite my lack of cash inflows.
Then a crazy thing happened. As my feelings of self-worth improved, money started to flow into my life. It is clear to me now, but I had been projecting my low self esteem to everyone I met. It was no wonder no one would hire me.
Then my life turned into a positive feedback loop. I would feel better, people began hiring me for jobs, money started to come in which boosted my feelings of self-worth. I have to say – it was awesome and also a revelation to me. It still is.
I also started to notice that as I started to get stressed out or unhappy, things stopped working. I would stop working. I would do things to sabotage myself and it would show up in my finances in a negative way.
So now when I start to stress out about my financial situation, I start to look at what the underlying root cause is. There is always something else going on that is leading to my current financial predicament.
Are you stressed about your finances? I challenge you to investigate what is really going on.
by Renee leNobel | Oct 31, 2016 | Divorce, Finances
I don’t know where to start with this blog post but I know the outcome I want. I know what I need to say but I’m not sure how it is going to look when I finally do say it. I am relying on my values and my life experiences to be pulled forth from me by the exploratory writing process to come up with a blog post that reflects what I want to say.
This is how collaboration works.
Collaboration is a multi-step process but a large part of it is exploration.
We as individuals are like icebergs. A tiny part of us is shown to the world, but the underlying support and essence of us is as big as the part of the iceberg that sits under the water. A huge life of experiences and values shapes the way each person responds in each situation in life.
The parts of us of that are underwater are hidden – no one else sees them and yet they are the parts of our being that drive the way we do things. Other people only see what is on the surface and make assumptions about how we work and how we respond in situations. We get into conflict with each other because we don’t see the values and life experiences that are hiding beneath the surface.
So to deal with conflict, we each need to explore what is under the surface for both ourselves and the other person we are conflict with.
As you each gain understanding of yourself and of the other person involved in the conflict, ways of moving forward start to become apparent. Solutions become clear and easily implemented because both parties to the conflict now buy into the solution.
What is amazing about collaboration is that it is a process that can be learned and it is a process that works.
The not so amazing part of collaboration is that most of us are not trained to be collaborative (despite me telling everyone that they need to take this course) when dealing with others in life and usually when you get to the point where you are required to use it, you are too emotional to do so. It is challenging to do something that is so completely different from what you have learned in life. It is doubly hard when you are already in the midst of emotional conflict.
So what do most of us do? We revert to the way we have been trained in life do deal with conflict. Now let me be clear when I say trained. I am not saying that someone specifically trained you, but I am saying your personality combined with your life experiences turned you into the person you are (your style of conflict is part of the iceberg that is hiding beneath the surface).
In situations of conflict, some people are trained to be bullies and always win. Some people are trained to be avoiders. Some are trained to capitulate and be accommodating at all costs. What is your style of conflict?
I was trained to always capitulate (after I had first avoided the conflict). Many of us have two styles of conflict. I use avoidance to stay away from conflict and then when it didn’t go away and the situation becomes more stressful, I capitulate. Despite knowing this about myself and despite knowing that this does not work, I still naturally revert to this way of dealing with conflict in life.
So knowing this, I have set up some systems in my life so I am forced to be collaborative.
Systems are good (says the accountant).
Because life seems to be a series of conflicts and I seem to revert to my old style of dealing with conflict. I got reminded of this AGAIN this past weekend.
On Friday, conflict turned up in my life (yes again).
Someone asked me a favour.
Now – I never respond right away to certain requests and this was a pretty big one so I said I needed time to think about it. This is the first step in the system I have put in place for myself:
- Never give an answer right away.
Give yourself time to think. Despite thinking you are cool calm and rational and have let go of all your issues, you have not (unless you are Deepak Chopra).
Because did I ever want to give an answer. It seemed so clear. The request flew in the face of a resolution I had recently made for myself. So while I said I needed time, I thought I knew my answer would be no. Yeah – I knew it. I felt calm and clear. But I still said I needed time because I have surprised myself before.
Then, I did something that goes against my rules of the collaborative process. I started to poll other people for their opinions in the matter. Because I thought they would agree with me (hah). This leads to step 2:
- Do not poll people that are not involved in the conflict.
(I have not learned this one yet – seriously – it’s one of my rules, but I broke it! See what happens when you are emotional? Revert revert revert).
What did I get when I did this? I got the underlying beliefs and values of my friends and family. They did not jibe with what I believed for many reasons – and that would involve an entirely new collaborative process for me to understand why they were telling me what they were. So all I got from this was guilt and confusion. One thing of interest was that opinions divided clearly along gender lines. The women lent towards capitulation. The men told me to do what would make me happy. Interesting…
So now that I was confused from my polling, I spent Sunday morning testing how each answer felt. Yes, I’m trying to be less analytical and go with my intuition. So I tested how saying yes felt (crappy) and how saying no felt (equally crappy).
This leads to step 3:
- When you start to cry, scream, get grumpy and become a nasty person it’s time to stop thinking about the conflict and take a break.
So I took a break. I rode my bike. That should be a rule too. Go ride your bike. OK, I’m kidding, but find something to do that you enjoy that will take your mind off the conflict. I know there are a lot of you out there that want to get the conflict resolved and this step seems indulgent, but it is essential. I will say it again, it is essential. Because most of us have been trained to think enjoying ourselves is bad. Especially when there is work to be done.
When my break was done, I felt good again. The light bulb went off (again). This leads to the next step:
- Get back to the collaborative process when you’ve fallen off and reverted to your old style of dealing with conflict.
So this morning I woke up and sent an email to the person that had asked me the favour. I requested another meeting because there is no clear answer to resolve this new conflict I find myself in. We need to do more exploration around the underlying issues that are leading to the request. I need to understand what is going on with the other person involved and he also needs to understand what is going on with me. I know when we get to that point we will find a solution that will be clear and work for both of us.
Now I await an answer for when we can meet. Now – this part is tricky. What if the other person does not want to collaborate? Well, it appears you have a new conflict on your hands and the only thing to do in this case is explore why they do not want to use collaboration. Now you have two conflicts to resolve using collaboration. All I can say is… more practice. Woo hoo!
Because I don’t know how the final outcome of my most recent conflict is going to turn out, I’m going to have to make some assumptions. I am going to assume that I am going to meet with the person I am in conflict with and we are going to work collaboratively until new and ingenious ways of solving the issue at hand become apparent.
This leads to the final step:
- Implement your solution to the conflict…
and test it by living your life. Next thing you know, another conflict situation will happen along and you will get to try it all over again.
I think I have spent enough time on this post. It feels right now. The collaborative process (me and my blog often get into conflict) has worked again!
